Articles
Important Questions - 10
“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” (James 2:14)
Trying to blend the teaching of James and Paul on works has proved a challenge throughout history. Paul, especially in Romans, emphasizes that it is genuine faith and trust in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus that appropriates redemption and enables God to confer the status of “righteous” though it is not merited.
James, on the other hand, addresses the verbal assertion of faith with little attempt to live by it. This is not a faith that God imputes as righteousness to the believer, for the faith is inadequate. It falls short of the kind of faith God seeks in His people.
In our own day, “faith” has been watered down to mean almost anything: a momentary, emotional reaction wherein one asks God to “come into his life”; a warm, fuzzy feeling toward God that substitutes for true devotion and sacrifice for Him; a dependence on organizational membership which defines one as a “Christian.” All of these mimic true faith and are deceptive.
James says, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (2:17). There is a level of belief in God that is actually “fruitless,” inactive. Demons possess this level of belief (2:19), and so do some people.
